Robotech_Master's Stories

Wolves Don't Swan Dive

2008-07-05T04:24:19Z

Renita:

In the split second before the branch gave way, the one thought that went through my head was, Why couldn’t I have been a werejaguar? They get nine lives. Then I was in free fall.

But the branch had swung left as it broke, tossing me away from the rocks—and toward the pool where the waterfall splashed down. A few seconds later, I splashed down, too.

Luckily, the pool was deep enough that I didn’t break my neck. Gasping and spluttering, disoriented by the pool’s turbulence, I struggled back to the surface—and found myself behind the waterfall. It seemed that the waterfall concealed the mouth of a cave that went some distance back into the cliff. “Oh, great,” I muttered. “Another cave. What is it with me and caves?”

Then I noticed some shapes moving along the bank of the stream outside. Dark, four-legged shapes, blurry through the waterfall. I shrank back into the cave, away from the light. At least the water will hide my scent.

But why did this cave have old torches fixed to the wall?

Marauder Sniper

2008-07-03T22:44:09Z

The bottom of the passenger seat flipped up, revealing Sasha’s personal weapons locker. I pulled out my harness and slapped it on, checked the load in the .357 automatic sidearm, then pulled out the case for the collapsible beam rifle.

A clever little gadget, I thought as I slapped it together. This gun represented the pinnacle of Marauder science. It projected a phase-pulse plasma beam that could even hurt an automech on a direct hit. I would plant myself safely out of the way of physical danger while my partner went in close, then I could back her up through the ‘scope. So the theory went, anyway.

Tasha let me out at the corner next to a utility pole, a block away from the house. Am testink comms. Check check? Tasha sent through my mastoid implant.

Check, I subvocalized back, then started climbing. Within just a few moments, I was perched at the top of the pole, with an excellent line of sight on the Aegis house.

Then to be lettink games begin!

I held my breath as Tasha rolled up the street.

Maurauder Triangulation

2008-07-03T20:38:15Z

I was just opening my mouth to ask Tasha what the hell this was, when she beat me to it with an alarm going off. “I am havink signal trace!” she crowed. “Is close! Very close!” The keyboard snapped back under the dash, and the terminal window flickered out. A GPS map of the surrounding blocks replaced it, with a red circle marking the area where the signal source might be.

“Am triangulatink now.” The circle shrank slowly, then became a bright pinprick. “There. That one.”

It was a small single-floored flat, in the French Provincial style. There weren’t any cars in sight, but three or four motor scooters were leaned haphazardly up against the side of the house. I tried to fix every detail in my mind as we cruised slowly past.

“Will circle block,” Tasha said. “Be ready.”

“We’re not going to call it in?”

“Have done that. But any delay may be meanink escape for Aegis running dogs. With no automechs on premises, is easy enough takink them out ourselves.”

I took a deep breath. “Okay, let’s do it.”

Marauder Search Engine

2008-07-03T19:54:40Z

I was “egosurfing” the Marauder network—checking for anything mentioning my own name. Or at least the name I made up when I enlisted: Ada Sherwood. “Ada” for Ada Lovelace, the first computer programmer. “Sherwood” for Sherwood Forest—since at the time, the Marauders had me thinking of them as a sort of modern-day Robin Hood outfit.

I did that every so often, ‘cuz it’s good policy to keep up on what other Marauders think of you so you don’t get blindsided. What usually popped up were after-action reports, duty rosters, that sort of thing. But now I was getting more than that. Maybe it was because the last few times I’d run the search had been from Dwayne’s terminal, or the terminal in my quarters. I guess they’d both been access-restricted, but Tasha had access to the whole network.

And there was this weird result at the bottom of the list…

Ada Sherwood
—beautiful
—friendly
—smart
—interested in me
—going out with me
—I like (love?) her

[Library A7, Subject M947 (Morton, Phil)]

Marauder Scanning

2008-07-03T18:13:10Z

The data the listening station was passing on had to be going out via a highly-directional microwave or laser transmission. If it was microwave, there would be a certain amount of directional leakage. If it was laser, then it should leave a faint but detectable trace where it reflected off specks of dust in the air—like a flashlight beam through smoke. Either way, we would pick it up when we were near enough. All we had to do was drive back and forth while the sensors kept an eye out.

(Of course, it could also be going through the Internet, but our hackers had found that the only area connections using enough bandwidth were all movie torrenters.)

After the first few hours, it began to get dull. I shoved the steering wheel across to the passenger side, pulled the keyboard out from under the dash, and flipped the multifunction display over to data terminal mode. Since Tasha was doing all the work, I figured I might as well just surf for a while.

I didn’t expect to find another piece of the puzzle.

Automech Firefight

2008-07-03T16:22:12Z

I don’t know whether it was a lucky shot or he was just that good, but the newcomer—who looked like he might have turned into a minivan—managed to hit Dugout’s bazooka with his first blast.

But Dugout was fast—he whipped around and chucked the burning bazooka at the vanbot. It exploded on impact, flinging the vanbot backward and doing a lot of body damage. The bot tried to get up, then lay still.

“Sonuva…” Flashback muttered, lowering his arm from his face. They’d both taken a little blast damage, but nothing more than cracked glass or scored paint. “Dugout, you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m tough.”

“Good, because—GAH!” Flashback was holed from back to front by a thick beam of white light. His optics flickered and went out. I looked up. While the vanbot had served as a distraction, the other two had moved in to the front.

Dugout pulled a rifle out of one leg and hunkered down behind the wall. “You killed Flashback! You BASTARDS !“

Keeping myself as small as possible, I edged toward Flashback’s fallen rifle.

Maurauder Search

2008-07-03T15:50:30Z

Our next mission was sniffing out an Aegis monitoring station that was picking up Lordun signals and funneling them back to their headquarters for analysis. We used a constantly changing encryption scheme, of course, and one-time pads for the really hot stuff, but even the fact that we were communicating could tell Aegis something.

Our intelligence sources had tracked the station to a small residential suburb on the outskirts of Las Vegas, but there was still a lot of ground to cover to pin it down. The income level of the area meant that a sports car like Tasha would not look out of place, so we were given the nod.

I was really excited about this mission—it would be my first chance to go head-to-head against Aegis, rather than creeping around in the background doing spy stuff while our heavy-hitters kept their attention elsewhere. It was almost enough to keep my mind off of the puzzle of what happened to Phil.

Almost.

Scanners on high alert, we began driving our search pattern.

Aegis Engaged

2008-07-03T02:56:10Z

The carbot moved behind a small grove of trees, and the SUV hunkered down behind a small stone wall that would provide partial cover. Their weapons tracked in unison, pointing at nothing but moving, inch by inch, toward where the cars would come into view. Then they stopped.

“They’re jamming our sensors!” carbot said. “Botnet, give us some counter-jamming backup here!”

Counterjamming? Me? “Uh, hang on—” I flipped through menus and application windows. Where the hell is counter-jamming?

“Oh, forget it. You are totally useless. Dugout, cover me.”

“On it, Flashback,” the SUVbot said. The carbot—Flashback—moved forward to the next grove of trees, then aimed his rifle and fired at something I couldn’t see. As he ducked back, Dugout raised his bazooka, waiting for a clear shot.

Then, with a crash, a new automech appeared on the scene—crashing through the undergrowth behind the two of them, off to my left. Before either Marauder could turn, the newcomer opened fire. I ducked and prayed he wouldn’t see me.

Marauder Evasion

2008-07-03T02:01:21Z

“Tasha, tell me!“

“Nyet. Is not beink good think to know.”

Now I was starting to get a little ticked off. “You know that you only make me want to know even more when you answer that way, right?”

“Cannot be helpink that. Ada, I am beink under orders not to tell you this think if you are not already knowink it. You know expression, ‘Could be tellink you but then be havink to kill you?’ Is like that. If superiors findink out I slipped, beink in hot water without paddle.”

“So I can’t ask anyone else either. Right.” I sighed. “Can you at least give me a hint? Is it bigger than a breadbox?” She didn’t answer. “Right. Okay, I’ll drop it. For now.”

Tasha sounded relieved. “Spasibo. Shall we be goink?”

“Yeah, sure.” I glanced out the window at the other bay, where the last few people were entering the “Processing” room. PROCESSED …Processing. Would my answers be found beyond those doors?

But now was not the time to go looking. I relaxed into the seat, closed my eyes, and let Tasha handle the driving.

Marauder from Moscow

2008-07-02T23:33:35Z

“Ah, is good fuel,” Tasha said in her thick accent that I was by now convinced was about 75% put-on. “We are havink better quality source these days. Decadent American obesity epidemic is at least good for somethink.“

Huh? I tried to follow her, then gave it up. Sometimes it felt like half the things she said didn’t make any sense. I got into the driver’s seat, and sighed as I closed the door. “No sign of Phil. No sign of anybody at all. I wonder where they all are?”

Tasha was oddly silent for a moment. “You mean, you are not knowink?”

“Knowink—” I cleared my throat. “I mean, knowing what?”

Her voice assumed a false-sounding air of breezy joviality. “Ah—where they are transferrink him after capture, of course!” Sometimes I wondered how an entirely computerized being could be such a terrible liar.

I stared at the dashboard. “Taaaasha?“

She was silent a moment longer, then spoke again—quietly, her accent strangely faint. “I misspoke. Pay it no mind. Some things, you are better off not knowing.”

Marauder Metallurgy

2008-07-02T21:06:11Z

So, while Tasha was topping off her tank, I slipped out of the maintenance bay, past the larger bay where confused civilians were being lined up in front of a set of doors marked “Processing,” and into the metallurgy wing. My agent badge gave me sufficient clearance to access any region of the base.

But the odd thing was, there did not seem to be any people actually in the base. I checked the workshops, the smelting rooms, the laboratories—and everywhere I looked, I only found automated equipment. There were more robot arms and manipulators than I had ever seen in one place before, but no human beings. I supposed the arms were being worked by telepresence—but when I checked the base schematics, I could not find any operating booths. Needless to say, Phil was nowhere to be found either.

I stopped at an info terminal and did a search on “Phil Morton.” There wasn’t much there—just a notation with the date of the lab raid operation and the word “PROCESSED.”

Disappointed, I headed back to rejoin Tasha.

Marauders' Roundup

2008-07-02T17:37:07Z

It happened right after we did a “fuel mission.” We got put on these jobs every so often; they involved rounding up a couple hundred people and carting them off in buses. The usual dodge was that we were evacuating the area because of a chemical leak.

I never had been sure what mass kidnapping had to do with fuel. I supposed that we held those people hostage until the government supplied us with fuel tankers as ransom.

Tasha and I worked together with a number of bot/human teams to round up all the residents of several blocks of houses in a small suburb. I dressed in my police uniform and herded the men, women, and children into “evacuation buses” with my brightest, reassuring smile.

After the roundup was over, speaking of fuel, Tasha declared her fuel gauge was getting low—so we decided to stop in at the Marauder refueling base ourselves.

And I had noticed something interesting in the base’s profile—it housed the Lorduns’ main metallurgical research lab. That had to mean I would get to see Phil again!

Marauder's Progress

2008-06-17T20:18:06Z

My next few missions were more straightforward, and I carried them off without a hitch. After my probationary period was over, I was promoted and given a new partner so Dwayne could train another newbie.

My new partner was a sleek Russian sports car who went by the name “Sabot Tasha.” We hit it off really well, and I found we had a lot of the same interests in common—she had formerly been human, and a fellow Decepticon fan, even though the show had been a little different dubbed into Russian. Another benefit was that I got to start dressing a lot nicer, to look the part of someone who would drive such a hot car.

After a bit of settling in, we started taking on some of the toughest assignments—and pulling them off with an admirable success rate. I flatter myself that Tasha and I must have set some kind of record for the fastest climb up the Aegis’s ten most wanted chart, but really, I don’t know if they even have one.

Yeah, life was great—right up until we made that little unscheduled refueling stop.

Birth of the Firefox, Part 15

2008-06-17T19:08:46Z

Of course, her original purpose had been to browse a hypertext network and display information to her users. There was no arguing with that. But there was no need for her to be self-aware in order to do that. Therefore, someone must have had a different purpose in mind by making her self-aware. But who had done that? Seeking an answer, the Firefox dived back into her codebase.

In mere moments, she had it. The bulk of the source code that had led to her awakening had been contributed by one Randall Schin. Auditing the code tree, there could be no doubt. Schin had consciously intended to create a system of sufficient complexity to become self-aware.

The question was, “why?” Schin had not been a blogger; there were no on-line writings of his that she could find (outside of cryptic source code comments) that could shed any light on why he had made her.

There was only one thing for it. She would have to find him and ask.

—

Happy Firefox Day! Don’t forget to download version 3.0!

Happiness in Slavery

2008-05-20T21:00:40Z

After a while, she brought me out of the gem. She couldn’t keep me in there forever; people would notice I was missing, and she was a stranger. So she developed another plan.

She twisted the spell somehow—I’m not sure how; I don’t think she knew either. She made it so she could see and hear what I did from within the gem, reflected in a facet. And her words would carry back to my ears, as well. So now I was still a prisoner—but the jail was turned inside-out.

Under her orders, I resumed my normal life. I went to school. She needed an expert thaumaturge to undo the spell—and so she ordered me to learn. And suddenly I was no longer able to slack off, to barely scrape by on my homework. I had to become a model student, because I no longer had any choice. My family was impressed at my new dedication.

I think that was what finally did it for me. She was helping me do what I’d never been able to on my own—to make my parents proud of me.

I no longer wanted to resist. I gave myself to her of my own free will.